The present invention relates generally to safety and surveillance equipment for vehicles, and in particular, to a surveillance system that records visual or audio data before an impact on a vehicle and beyond the time of the impact.
Safety and surveillance equipment is used on vehicles to collect data that is of particular interest, including audio and video data. For example, safety and surveillance equipment is used on commercial aircraft to collect flight data prior to any catastrophic event that the aircraft may experience. The safety and surveillance equipment presently used on aircrafts to capture flight data include a flight data recorder (FDR) that records the operating conditions of the aircraft and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) that records all sounds in the cockpit of the aircraft.
In addition to the FDR and the CVR, it is proposed that some aircraft include a flight video data recorder (FVDR) that records visual data from a flight. As disclosed in Feher, U.S. Pat. No. 4,816,828, visual images of a flight are recorded in the same manner as operating and audio data are recorded with the FDR and the CVR, respectively. However, unlike the FDR and the CVR, commercial aircraft are not required to carry flight video data recorders. Thus, in the aircraft industry, the use of video recorders to collect crash data is not widespread.
Although recorders are used on aircraft, this type of safety and surveillance equipment is not used on ground vehicles such as automobiles. This is in spite of the fact that the annual number of car crashes and resulting fatalities greatly exceed the annual number of airplane crashes. For instance, in 1996, three hundred and eighty people died in air crashes on commercial carriers according to the 1999 New York Times Almanac. Meanwhile, the number of people who died in automobile accidents in 1996 was 41,907, which constituted ninety-four percent of all transportation fatalities in that year. Moreover, another 3.5 million people were injured in automobile accidents. The annual number of automobile accidents, injuries and fatalities has not changed much since 1970 despite the safety improvements to the production of automobiles, wider highway lanes, better lighting, and lower speed limits.
In light of the benefits surveillance systems provide in investigating aircraft crashes and the relatively large number of automobile crashes, a need exist for a vehicle surveillance system for use in capturing data surrounding motor vehicle crashes.
In summary, a surveillance system is provided for capturing visual data of a vehicle. The surveillance system includes at least one camera mounted on a vehicle. Preferably, the camera is a panoramic viewing camera. The camera is placed to capture internal and external images of the vehicle. Additionally, the camera captures the areas surrounding the vehicle. A recorder is coupled to the camera to record the captured images from the camera. Alternatively, the recorder transmits the images to a receiver for viewing at a location remote from the vehicle. If an impact occurs on the vehicle, a sensor determines whether the impact is of a predetermined force. If the impact is of the predetermined force, then the sensor activates a cut-off timer that causes the recorder to stop recording after a predetermined time. If there are additional impacts to the vehicle of a predetermined force, then the cut-off timer is reset to add recording time based on the number of impacts. For example, a single impact allows for five seconds of additional recording time after the impact, and a second impact increases the recording time by five more seconds, and so on. When the predetermined time expires, the recorder powers off. As an alternative to, or in addition to capturing visual data, audio data is captured using a microphone and recorded by the recorder. Advantageously, this enables the recording of visual and/or audio data before and after impacts on the vehicle, giving a full before and after account of an incident.